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I guess that's exactly the author's point? That the company has too much control. She isn't arguing about websites, she's arguing that social media networks ar

I guess that's exactly the author's point? That the company has too much control. She isn't arguing about websites, she's arguing that social media networks are too powerful and they'll happily block criticism when they can gey away with it. None of this is about whether this is just a website or the semantics of it. It's that a company has too much power. And that's a real problem. A lot of people get their news from Facebook. Meta can (and does) decide what to show to whom

warkdarrior 3y ago
The point is that anyone can create a website and attract users, so it is pointless to call any one website as "too powerful". Remember Myspace? They used to be THE social network, so they no longer are. Facebook's time will pass as well, to be replaced by another website. The power a website has is only proportional to how many users visit it. Facebook has infinite power on their website, but if users stopped using that website, Facebook's power would disappear.
- swiftcoder 3y ago
  You are assuming that Facebook can't leverage it's dominant market position to buy every new network that threatens to surplant it (instagram, whatsapp, and ~100 other Facebook acquisitions would like a word)
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    and TikTok?
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      Well, yeah, kinda. More than kinda even. Facebook already stole a lot of TikTok's essence [0]; quite successfully too. And, TikTok is being targeted by Congress, rather clearly because young people are learning too much about Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing on there [1]. If you consider that Facebook is basically a spy machine for US intelligence [2] and has been for a long time, this can be seen as the US eliminating/buying the competition for them by the power of government seizure. 0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/29/facebook-reels-instagram-creators-influencers-tiktok/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/29/facebook-... 1 - https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/03/14/tiktok-us-israel/ https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/03/14/ti... 2 - https://www.csoonline.com/article/546958/microsoft-subnet-julian-assange-facebook-is-a-spy-machine-for-us-intelligence.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/546958/microsoft-subnet-ju...
    - swiftcoder 3y ago
      I mean, they pivoted all of their major social network platforms to clone tiktok's core feature set pretty much as soon as TikTok started gaining traction. I think it's likely they are betting on the US government not tolerating a foreign-owned social network in the long term.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
    Sounds anti-competitive.

warkdarrior 3y ago

The point is that anyone can create a website and attract users, so it is pointless to call any one website as "too powerful". Remember Myspace? They used to be THE social network, so they no longer are. Facebook's time will pass as well, to be replaced by another website. The power a website has is only proportional to how many users visit it. Facebook has infinite power on their website, but if users stopped using that website, Facebook's power would disappear.

swiftcoder 3y ago
You are assuming that Facebook can't leverage it's dominant market position to buy every new network that threatens to surplant it (instagram, whatsapp, and ~100 other Facebook acquisitions would like a word)
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  and TikTok?
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    Well, yeah, kinda. More than kinda even. Facebook already stole a lot of TikTok's essence [0]; quite successfully too. And, TikTok is being targeted by Congress, rather clearly because young people are learning too much about Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing on there [1]. If you consider that Facebook is basically a spy machine for US intelligence [2] and has been for a long time, this can be seen as the US eliminating/buying the competition for them by the power of government seizure. 0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/29/facebook-reels-instagram-creators-influencers-tiktok/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/29/facebook-... 1 - https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/03/14/tiktok-us-israel/ https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/03/14/ti... 2 - https://www.csoonline.com/article/546958/microsoft-subnet-julian-assange-facebook-is-a-spy-machine-for-us-intelligence.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/546958/microsoft-subnet-ju...
  - swiftcoder 3y ago
    I mean, they pivoted all of their major social network platforms to clone tiktok's core feature set pretty much as soon as TikTok started gaining traction. I think it's likely they are betting on the US government not tolerating a foreign-owned social network in the long term.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Sounds anti-competitive.